Congratulations. The October labor lottery is complete. Your name was pulled. For immediate placement, report to the Ministry of Admission at Grestin Border Checkpoint. An apartment will be provided for you and your family in East Grestin. Expect a Class-8 dwelling.

March 19

Welcome to your new position at Grestin Border Checkpoint. This is your inspector's kit. Study the rulebook, inspect the sample documents and use the stamps liberally. Wear the pin to signify your new status and hang the poster proudly.

In the box:

Papers, Please Steam key

Labor Lottery keyring

Arstotzkan passport & paperwork set

Set of Arstotzkan stamps

Glory to Arstotzka poster

Department of Labor suitcase

Approved stamp, Denied stamp & Ink pad

Inspector’s pin badge

Arstotzkan Immigration Rule Book

This is a one-off compilation that will never be offered again, so grab one while you can.

About This Game

Congratulations. The October labor lottery is complete. Your name was pulled.
For immediate placement, report to the Ministry of Admission at Grestin Border Checkpoint.
An apartment will be provided for you and your family in East Grestin. Expect a Class-8 dwelling.
Glory to Arstotzka

The communist state of Arstotzka has just ended a 6-year war with neighboring Kolechia and reclaimed its rightful half of the border town, Grestin.

Your job as immigration inspector is to control the flow of people entering the Arstotzkan side of Grestin from Kolechia. Among the throngs of immigrants and visitors looking for work are hidden smugglers, spies, and terrorists.

Using only the documents provided by travelers and the Ministry of Admission's primitive inspect, search, and fingerprint systems you must decide who can enter Arstotzka and who will be turned away or arrested.

"Papers, please." *man hands me poorly drawn picture of himself* "Sir thats not a valid passport" Man: "ok that fine I come back later" *comes back the next day with name scribbled below picture* 11/10

Every once in a while an indie game comes along that, to me, is not a clear like or dislike. I started playing Papers, Please and go to day eight before quitting the first time. I thought to myself, "Who the hell wants to play a game based on stamping visas? I can't wait to get done working for the day at my REAL job!"

Two days later I found myself thinking about the game. I wanted to know what happened to the people I approved or denied. Was it better to deny them entry, or to be a tyrant and detain them? I mean, who doesn't know that their visa information is incorrect. LIAR! YOU ARE A CRIMINAL!

It is just a game though, why do I care? I did not, really. I played again, anyway.

The game kept my enthusiasm up as the difficulty ramped up, money was tight, and I seemed to be responsible for the lives of so many more pixel people than I anticiapted. I enjoyed it up until the very end. Good job, author.

Pros

Amazingly enough, makes stamping visas intriguing if you are the type of player that can get immersed in pixels.

The save system is AWESOME. Almost like a source code repository, if you start playing at an existing day, you create a branch at that day and continue playing in a parallel universe.

Many different endings depending on choices made throughout the game. Reminiscent of Chrono Trigger, you do not have to get to the last day to trigger some endings.

Even though simple and interactions are quick, you can feel sympathy or opposed to certain characters.

Cons

Replayability was low for me. The game has very varied endings, but I found that after I meta-gamed the Steam Achievements out, I was not inclined to go back through and try to get the endings for which there are no achievements for.

Certain things feel pointless in the game - although that might have been the developers intent.

Can be frustrating and wig out your OCD.

Recommendation

I would recommend Papers, Please if you are type of gamer who does not need flashy graphics or rapid game play to be entertained. If you are a fan of indie game development, Papers, Please is an enjoyable title that may grow on you as it has grown on me.

Papers, Please is one of those games where you go in expecting to not like it. The graphics are retro (terrible compared to most other games available today), the controls overly simplistic, the music very repetitive. There are no voice actors; every conversation is shown by moving text bubbles. Finally, there is only one setting and you are completely stationary.

Put all of the above together and you would think that this is one of the most terrible games of the decade. But you would be wrong. Despite its simplicity, despite its repetitiveness, this is one of the most in depth, thought provoking games I've played in years. And with 20 different endings, there is plenty of replayability.

This game actually made me break down in tears of sorrow. So much meaningful commentary on life. When I talk about meaningful games, this is always at or near the top of the list. It's hard for me to play, not only because the gameplay is actually challenging, but because of the human element. The things you have to do to continue the game, the decisions you're faced with, are all difficult and challenging. I really think everyone should play this game.

Glory To Arstotzka! If you want intense action sequences including stamping passports, shooting terrorists and x-raying people to check for contraband, then this is a game for you! Some aspects of the game become very challanging including telling apart a man from a woman, confiscating illegal paraphernalia and resisting the urge to not leave your border outpost to go to the strip clubs advertised by foreign visiters. Dont let your family die and kill all those terrorisers!

A concept that is basically running immigration for an eastern-bloc country during the cold war. Sounds boring as hell, right? So deceitful it is then, because few things are more addicting. While playing, I kept finding myself thinking "Just one more day, one more then off to bed". Five hours later, it's 5AM and I'm due at work in three hours. No regrets here, either. The gameplay is simple but deep, and the story branches like a visual novel. Plus it's the only game I've ever played to truly make me actually feel -BAD- for doing what the game tells me to. Video game history teaches us that morality is black and white. Papers reveals how evoke it with more gray area than I ever thought a game could, and it's crazy how easily it does so.

There's a reason this game was voted GoTY by so many publications, and touted as simply amazing by gamers far and wide. Quirky, fun, addictive - you owe it to yourself to play this gem. GLORY TO ARSTOTZKA!

A "Paperwork simulator" sounds like a hard sell, but it's encouraging to see that word-of-mouth is getting people to try this wonderful little game out. It's refreshing to have something different for a change rather than another FPS, platformer or suchlike.

Your job is to give or refuse permission to enter your country to various people who come to your customs booth...... it is a hard sell, isn't it?

Okay then, your job is made more difficult in several ways. First of all, your bureaucratic government implements more and more rules as time goes on which means you have to be quicker and quicker at processing, without letting accuracy fall. Secondly, you have certain moral choices to make - you have to feed and warm your own family and that can only be done by processing people as quickly as possible. Well, unless they bribe you to let them in, or the guards bribe you to detain them or... and of course, there's always the risk of forged documentation [which you are punished for if you miss] or terrorist attack [which curtails the day].

This game is deeply engrossing. It's straightforward to begin with, but the difficulty curve is just right, adding complexity day by day - just as you master the rules something else comes along which you have to keep an eye out for. Added to the fact that there are MANY, MANY different possible endings will lead you to replay this several times in order to see what happens.

I enjoy this game.This game seems like a bad idea for a game ( I mean seriously who wants to be their favorite hero the border-control-guy)But this game was one of the most engrossing and entraping games I've played this year.

Ever wanted to be an immigration officer at a border? Well this game will give you that chance! The game mainly focuses on you looking at documents and trying to find incorrect information. The game becomes more complex with new types of documents and rules changing throughout the story due do the politics. The game also has a pretty cool story that will have you making decisions on how things will turn out in the future by the power of your stamp!

This game is a social commentary about life as a border agent in a communist dictatorship/oligarchy. It can show you the struggle that people can go through when they live in an area that is oppressive. This game is not for people that want variety in their gameplay, it has 0 variety. This is a linear game that hardly changes from start to finish. There are many different paths, and depending on how you go through the game, can change in length a lot. I enjoyed this game myself, but you should only buy it if you wish to view social commentary of this type, and not for variety or flamboyant things in the gameplay. I think this is a great game that many people can enjoy.

Few jobs are more soul-sucking than sitting at a cramped desk and shuffling paperwork for hours on end. Now imagine doing that in an Eastern Bloc country during the height of the Cold War, with low pay, bleak conditions and the constant threat of being fired or worse if you screw up.Tedious, boring and stressful. Ideal subject matter for a video game, no?And yet Papers, Please is an unforgettable experience. It's been dubbed a "paperwork simulator" and that's not entirely inaccurate - but it's truly a game about freedom, power and how fleeting and illusory each can be.Papers, Please is an independent game designed by former Naughty Dog programmer Lucas Pope and it casts players as a border checkpoint officer in the fictional communist country of Arstotzka. Your job is simple, at least in concept: examine the documents of people who are trying to get into the country, and determine whether they're eligible for entry or should be turned away.At first it's as easy as checking criteria like passport expiry dates, and rejecting paperwork that's invalid or forged. But before long, Papers, Please becomes a tension-filled juggling act, as you're cross-referencing work permits with identity cards, making sure the applicant's weight matches the value on their entry papers, checking fingerprint records and sometimes doing full-body scans for drugs and weapons.Every new day adds new rules to follow and new layers of complexity, from making sure applicants' vaccinations are up to date to applying a draconian extra level of inspection for citizens of a rival nation. And every time you let mess up, you lose the money you'd have earned for properly processing that batch of paperwork.To give the game a sense of grim consequence, your wages are tallied up at the end of each day, from which you must pay for rent, food, heat and medicine for your family. There's almost never enough money for everything... do you let your family go hungry in order to keep the heat on? When both your wife and son are sick and you can only afford medicine for one, who gets it?Despite the retro-flavoured visuals, the act of shuffling virtual papers is actually surprisingly tactile, and spotting a discrepancy and slamming the "denied" stamp down on a person's passport imparts an odd thrill of power.But not all decisions are clear-cut, and the game has 20 different endings depending on how things unfold. Do you let a man's pleading wife into the country, even though her paperwork isn't valid and the money it will cost you may mean you can't feed your family that night? Do you deny passage to the man who you suspect is a human trafficker, even though all his documents are in order? Who is behind the enigmatic organization that wants to overthrow the government, and do you dare get involved with their cause?With a deluge of big-budget, high-profile games on the horizon, it might be easy to overlook a quiet, unusual game like Papers, Please. But don't do that, comrade. The consequences would be dire.

I was amazed at how much fun I had actually "working". It's kind of an old school graphics game,so if that's all you're into, this game is probably not for you. In this game it's all about noticing the detail and staying on your toes. The actual story of the game does not last all that long but it can be some trial and error figuring out how to get things done correctly and learning how to make things quicker for yourself so you can make more money. It also helps to memorize things as well. You also have some moral decisions to make to either help someone or make life easier for yourself. I have nearly 54 hours logged on this game although some of the time is AFK time. I also have all the achievements as well, it's not too difficult to get them all.

Pros:- Best ost ever, sorry Hotline Miami- You can random search and red stamp Kolechians- You can green stamp people from Kobrastan- Stealing passport to refugees who are struggling for survive- Arstotzka best country- Jorji is love, Jorji is lifeAnd has plenty of drugs!Cons:- What is passport.- Ministry of Admission giving you a Recognition for sufficience.

The gameplay is border control tedious paperwork. Verifying if different entries are coherent, checking for frauds or typos, asking people to provide more information. And then deciding if you let them through or not.

I have very little empathy to pixels, so I thought this was going to be easy. I would just accept people whose papers are fine, and then refuse people whose papers are not right even if they are dying and need an organ transplant.

But then the game got to me. There is so much more going on than just the little story of the person that comes to meet you. One person will tell you about another. Will give you something for another. Will try to bribe you, and you need the money to keep your own family afloat. There are events going on in the game's world, and it is subtly told through short sequences or short news reports.I have to give a file to a spy. Someone else comes, and tells me that he is also a spy, and the next person looking for the file is a bad guy. He gives me another file so I can switch for the fake. Which file do I choose to give, who do I trust? And then I start to care. A girl tells me that her abusive boyfriend that beats her up and might end up killing her is coming. His papers are alright, but I still refuse to let him enter, and get a salary sanction for my decision. The game won, I was not just proceeding as if they were pixels and I started to make moral choices and get invested in my role.

This game is not exactly "fun", but it is Art and worth trying to anyone that wants to see maturity in the video games medium. Very original, meaningful, and really well crafted.